With Yoenis Cespedes and Asdrubal Cabrera set to return, the time is now for the New York Mets to gain headway for October.
Something has to give.
When a team collectively bats .205 with runners in scoring position, a mark which is not just lowest in the Majors but is also a historic nadir, something often rights the ship.
To paraphrase the law of averages:
“Most future events are likely to balance any past deviation from a presumed average.”
If the principle holds true, the New York Mets will uplift that pitiful statistic which pins them at an unthinkable 60-60 record more than halfway through August.
And if you could make a bet on how the Mets would reverse their fortune, you’d have to look to the same man who rescued a sinking vessel last season.
Yoenis Cespedes – a champion of dramatics which include clutch home runs, shoestring catches, and timely 400-plus foot blasts – is the savior the Mets so desperately need.
With the man himself declaring a Friday return, it’s safe to say he’ll be back in the fold for the weekend.
“I felt comfortable at the plate. I’ll be ready for Friday,” Cespedes said, according to Michael Baron.
The Mets also plan to get their regular shortstop, Asdrubal Cabrera, back after an 18-day DL stint.
RELATED: Asdrubal Cabrera Set To Return This Weekend
With two consistent contributors on the mend (Cespedes — .289/.362/.548; Cabrera — .255/.308/.410), the Mets can no longer excuse poor play with a wave of the injury flag.
They’ll have to play better –- and the rise must come now.
Whatever it takes and whatever it costs, the Mets are going to have to flip the switch for which they’ve been groping in the dark for months.
Shift it into high gear. Put the pedal to the metal. Gas it to the finish line.
Pick your metaphor and find your inspiration, Mets. Because a crop of talent like this doesn’t come along too often, and wasting it is a shameful smear of the efforts it took to assemble such a group.
Tonight, the Mets will travel to San Francisco where they’ll meet a stalling Giants team. The Giants are 9-21 since the All-Star Break, which represents the worst post-break record in the National League.
The Mets sit four games behind St. Louis’ loosely held second wild card spot, which is currently challenged by NL Central foe Pittsburgh.
The Bucs recent surge nets them at 62-56, just a game out of the second wild card.
With competitive National League teams making their respective cases for October baseball, only embarrassment has prevailed in New York, as the Mets have dropped five of six from a lowly Arizona team (50-70), with a hardly redeeming series win in San Diego stuck in the middle, in the club’s last nine games.
SEE ALSO: Yoenis Cespedes Set To Return Friday (Report)
Now, the schedule turns for a slew of competitive teams, as the Mets will wrap up the month with three of its final four series versus winning teams (San Francisco and St. Louis on the road, and Miami at Citi Field).
Washington awaits the Mets for six in the beginning of September.
But, at the end of the day, the schedule can be a simple fixture of human paranoia, as a well-prepared, focused, and ultimately productive club can rise above the teams it faces if such characteristics come to fruition.
And if they do, the Mets are capable of rolling through the end of August and beginning of September to the avail of winning baseball’s sudden return to Queens.
If the Mets can climb out of a self-dug hole, momentum can swell into a mass exodus from the jail cell that is .500 baseball into the promised land of postseason baseball.
The switch flip must happen, though, and it must be caused – it must be sparked.
Last season’s spark, Yoenis Cespedes, is back tomorrow.
If you’re more likely to be bit by the same shark twice than be struck by lightning (as said by the secret society of ‘they’), maybe Cespedes is that shark –- chomping at the bit to inflict the same hope-crushing trauma on the National League’s contending clubs as he did a year ago.
As some Mets’ interns shuffle potential travel plans for the month of October, the team’s time to decide the fate of those plans – workouts in Florida or playoff baseball in New York – is indisputably right now.
Because over the course of 162-game, six-month long regular season, there seems to always be a defining stretch of time which determines a club’s destiny. And there are only 42 games left, and a month and a half remaining.
It’s time to hone in on that rightful destiny, and kick this thing into high gear.
